Thief (9 page)

Springston was an oil town, one of those crazy little places that opened up wherever another well had struck it rich, and which usually lasted no longer than the oil. When it ran out, the town would shut, and the people would leave. But not forever.  Sooner or later it would reopen with a new name and a new location, just as soon as another well was dug.

That winter, he recalled, had been pretty typical. The ponds had frozen over, the snows had come, and a couple of blizzards had swept through town leaving their usual trail of confusion and chaos. The only thing that had changed was the new boys in town, the James’ kids. Hal and his big brother Larry.

Neither had been much older than him or Billy, perhaps just a couple of years, but both had the bulk of pro-wrestlers, and the attitude to go with it. They’d seemed to delight in tearing the other kids apart. Bleeding noses and bruises the size of watermelons had become a way of life for them all. And the worst of it had been that they couldn’t run to their parents. That would be sissy and that to an eight year old boy was intolerable. And besides, afterwards the James’s boys would come and beat you twice as hard. All of the kids had found that out the hard way.

Then one day the James’s boys had gone after Billy, only this time they’d really gone to town on him. Five broken ribs, half his teeth missing, permanently blind in one eye, and left for dead behind the bike sheds. He’d spent weeks in hospital, and according to the doctors was lucky to survive at all. The police had gone out hunting a madman, while all the kids knew who’d done it, but wouldn’t say boo. And it was all over a silly pair of gloves. Billy’s father had bought them for him as an early birthday present. If only they’d known.

Michael, too angry to think straight, and too small to have had any chance of winning had still gone after them the same day. One of the most stupid things he’d ever done, yet perhaps also one of the sanest. He nursed his bruises for weeks after. Anger and rage burnt through him for days after that as he lay in bed, barely able to move. The James’s boys had thought him too cowed to ever try again, but they hadn’t reckoned on his rage. Or his methods. The second time he had gone after them the only way he could, with his wits. He was half their size, and didn’t know how to throw a punch anyway, but he was a lot brighter than them.

He’d had a secret weapon up his sleeve, a police band radio. His father had been the local cop, and Michael had secretly repaired his old unit that he’d thrown out in the trash when it blew. Electronics had been a hobby of his, and he’d wanted to hear the real live stuff his dad got involved in, catching bad guys, that sort of thing.

Using his wits he’d cooked his own goose most thoroughly.

He’d gone to the James’ after school that day, and told them that Billy had died and that the police were coming for them. It was gas chamber time. Of course there was no death penalty in Canada, never had been, but they were too stupid to know that. It had been worth the new bruises to see the fear in their eyes. After all, his father was the cop, so he should know. The two boys had run for their home as fast as they could, hoping no doubt to hide all the stuff they’d stolen off the other kids, and tell their father so he could somehow save them.

Mr James was a rigger, a large angry powerhouse of a human being and not a nice man to deal with. No doubt the two of them thought he’d beat up the law or something. But he wasn’t about to let them have that dream for long.

While they were still running he’d called in a peeping Tom report at Mrs. Hunt’s house. She lived directly across the street from the James’ house. And so by the time the two of them got there, the only police car in town was already waiting, directly in front of their home, exactly as he intended, while his father was busy searching the grounds.

The boys had done exactly what he’d expected then, they’d panicked and run for hell and high water, not daring to go home, not when they thought the police were already there, hunting them. Looking back he realized, their father had probably been as rough on them as they were on everybody else. Maybe even worse. There was something ingrained in their violence. But he hadn’t guessed that then, and if he had, would he really have cared? Even now he didn’t know.

The boys had spent the first night in someone’s garage, hiding under a truck tarpaulin, while the whole town went looking for the missing boys. The creator only knew what dark fears had run through the boys’ minds as they’d hidden there, watching the whole town hunting them. The next night they’d spent at the disused truck stop, while the town went absolutely berserk with worry. On the third day the town had called in the army to help in the search, while the two boys had managed to smuggle themselves aboard a truck heading south.

And all the while Michael had known both the intoxicating feeling of power as they’d run, and the ice-cold terror of being caught. As the days went by, and the town went into mass hysteria, the guilt and fear had grown in him like an evil weed. But he hadn’t told anyone what he’d done. It couldn’t have helped any, since he didn’t know where the boys were either. At least that was what he’d told himself. In truth he’d just been scared.

Finally of course it had all fallen apart, as he should have known it would. The boys had been stopped at the city. Trying to steal food they were caught easily, and taken to the local police station. Thereafter they’d spilled everything. About their actions, about Billy, and about him. Of course they didn’t know about the radio part or the fake call. But his father did. In about two seconds he’d put it all together and then found the radio hidden under Michael’s bed.

That was a bad day.

Unlike the James’ father, his dad had never raised his voice to him let alone his hand. He’d simply spoken - a punishment far worse. His voice had been like the sound of a bell tolling for the dead, and the look in his eyes told more of his pain than anything else. For Michael it was as though a knife had been plunged into his heart, and then twisted. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, but disaster had followed swiftly. In a single action he’d lost his father more permanently than if he’d shot him.

He’d tried to explain, all that day and the next, and the next, he’d desperately tried to explain, but it hadn’t been enough. He’d compromised his father’s job, he’d lied and cheated, and he’d nearly been responsible for the disappearance of two boys who could have run into anything in the big city. Above all he’d lied to his family, by omission, by not coming to them with everything he knew at the beginning and by not confessing later. It was like talking to a stone cold brick wall. The man he loved with everything he had, the father he admired and wanted to grow up to be like, had become a statue.

A week later he’d been packed off to boarding school in Montreal, where his Aunt Mabel had promised to look after him. Aunt Mabel was his mother’s eldest sister and a devoutly religious woman. She was known for speaking her mind in public, and was a strong believer in law and order. It was hoped she’d take his waywardness and mould him into a fine upstanding citizen. 

He still remembered the last sight he’d ever seen of his family at the bus depot. His father had been grim, his face a grim mask of death, while his mother had cried like the end of the world was upon them. His little sister too had cried, though she was surely too young then to even know why she was crying. But at least then he’d hoped this would only be for a few months. His mother had promised him he could come home when he was truly sorry for what he’d done. He cried for the entire sixteen hours of that bus ride, wondering how he could ever make it up to them.

Unfortunately for him, things were not as he’d been told. Were they ever?

His very Christian Aunt Mabel had actually been an alcoholic, and worse still, an alcoholic with a bad temper and financial problems. She’d taken him out of the private school they’d sent him to on the first day, and with that and the monies his family gave her every month to send him there, managed to support her addiction. All the letters he’d sent back to his home begging for forgiveness, she’d kept back, not ever wanting him and more importantly, his money to leave her. All the reports she sent to his folks told of his evil ways and the need for the church in his life. A crock and a half. His very Christian Aunt Mabel hadn’t even been in a church in all the years he lived with her, though she’d preached endlessly.

His life for the next few years had become a blur of beatings and emotional abuse, while his loving family became a distant fond memory he clung to for warmth. One day he’d hoped and prayed, they would come for him. But it wasn’t to be. School quickly became his refuge from home, and he’d started doing all the extra-curricular classes he could.

One day never came.

His Aunt was killed crossing the road when he was just eleven. Blind drunk she’d stepped in front of a lorry and been killed instantly. Had she suffered? He didn’t know, but he had. Unbelievably, in death she harmed him even more than in life.

It had begun when he’d found all the letters he’d written to his family, neatly stacked in a shoebox in the bottom of her wardrobe. He’d hated her at that moment, as he’d never hated anyone else in his young life. How could she have done that to him? He’d spent all that time and effort begging for a reprieve, waiting for a rescue that never came, and she’d simply deprived him of all hope without him ever knowing. How could anyone be so mean?

Her house he quickly found out, she didn’t own, - at roughly the same time he was thrown out into the cold streets, which was the day before her funeral. By the time they’d buried her in a pauper’s grave he’d become a street kid. Because he wasn’t her child the social support agencies never identified him as an orphan, and he had to survive on charity and soup kitchens. Social welfare in those days was far from the support net it was supposed to have become, and life was hard, something he learned early.

Life thereafter became a battle ground for him. Tossed like a pretzel between church, foster homes and the few homes for wayward boys he’d learned about the mean side of the streets, and the precious few good people that shone brightly among the trash. Most of those families that had taken him in had simply wanted a free labourer, someone to do the chores, and generally stay out of the way. Some were just cold, and some were straight out sadistic, while a few had even more vile intentions for a small child. Beatings, starvation, running away and trying to find some protection from the cold became the norm for him. And always, like his dearly departed Aunt, his would be foster parents spouted the verses of the bible at him, as they beat his skin from his bones.

Impossible as it might be to accept for the good fathers of the church, the streets were actually safer for him than their parishioners’ homes.

Crime soon became a way of life for him. Morality wasn’t an issue for a street kid. People with full stomachs and warm feet have morals, street urchins don’t. Crime brought him food, clothes and books to read, and gave him something to live for, an interest and a challenge. It paid his few school fees, and he’d always liked school. What’s more, he found he was good at it. And he liked being good at something. He might be smaller and weaker than others, but as a thief he could get some respect.

Cat burglary quickly became his forte. His small build and wiry muscles letting him get in to places nobody else could, while his quick wits got him out again. In five years on those mean streets he was never once caught in the act, though several times his so-called friends had dobbed him in. Trust was also not part of his life on the streets, a lesson he had eventually learned.

By the time he’d graduated from high school, he was also an accomplished criminal with a record long enough to stop him ever getting a job. Crime he found, was a vicious circle. The only way he could support himself was to steal, and the theft kept getting him back on the wrong side of the law, even when they couldn’t prove anything, which was the norm.

Eventually he’d decided, the only way he was ever going to have a chance at a life was to leave. Not just the city, the country. He had to go somewhere were nobody knew him. A fresh start. That had been the motive for his first bank job.

He’d cased it for weeks, timing everything down to the last second. It had been ridiculously easy. The two guards always walked in to the bank together while a third stood by the van doors guarding the bags they removed. He’d left a small device in the bank’s rubbish bins that day, and a simple push of the remote control had set it off. The sounds of gunfire and smoke had quickly caused complete confusion while the third guard had run for the van’s front cab and tried to radio in for help. He never even noticed that the van’s back door had shut but not latched properly. A tiny amount of gum had ensured that. And while he was at the front radioing in, Michael had helped himself to two bags at the rear of the van and walked away with them under his coat.